Remember when games didn't need patches and updates?

[opa]

The "games are more complex these days" argument is just waving away the responsibility to put out a good product on release day.

Ideally, you would wait to release your game until most of the errors are ironed out but we know that's not how things go these days.

[MrPopo]

The "games are more complex these days" argument is just waving away the responsibility to put out a good product on release day.

Ideally, you would wait to release your game until most of the errors are ironed out but we know that's not how things go these days.

You clearly have never worked on a software project of any real complexity if you think this is feasible. Something on the level of a modern game, you could lock down the code base to only bug fixes for a year and still things will get through (and that's assuming you can actually pull off that lock down and not have a bunch of features-as-bugs sneak in). Sometimes fixing one bug will cause another and it can ping pong back and forth (or turn into a circle of fixing A causes B, fixing B causes C, fixing C causes A). And this is just you testing against a closed platform of a console. Now throw in the wild west of the PC, where a large number of other factors can create bugs that are hard to reproduce and aren't though of during development time.

Case in point, the famously buggy release of Cyberpunk. Except that said bugs weren't consistent across players. For me I had a handful (as in, less than five) crashes over the course of the campaign and one instance of ragdoll freakiness; otherwise it was a smooth experience from a technical perspective. Other people had all kinds of wonkiness.

[marurun]

It's not just big teams on B - AAA games. Modern indie developers are using tools like Unity and such which incorporate all sorts of functionality. There are a lot of indie games on modern PCs and consoles which take up a lot more memory and CPU time than it feels like they should because of all the overhead of these tools and engines. So even something that's relatively "simple" to develop has an awful lot of complexity and overhead going on behind the scenes, which means many more opportunities for bugs and the unexpected.

All the more reason to eschew modern games and their dev tools.

I realize this comment was made on a classic/retro gaming forum, however... it does ring a little of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. There's a crap-ton of awesome, retro indies built on those modern tools which are indeed bloated because of their engine or middleware and which required a lot of work to troubleshoot and debug but which are, ultimately, excellent distillations of everything we love about the older games we play. And there's a crap ton of buggy, under-performing old games as well that some of us enjoy despite our better instincts.

[o.pwuaioc]

All the more reason to eschew modern games and their dev tools.

I realize this comment was made on a classic/retro gaming forum, however... it does ring a little of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. There's a crap-ton of awesome, retro indies built on those modern tools which are indeed bloated because of their engine or middleware and which required a lot of work to troubleshoot and debug but which are, ultimately, excellent distillations of everything we love about the older games we play. And there's a crap ton of buggy, under-performing old games as well that some of us enjoy despite our better instincts.

(Hopefully you all realize I'm being cheeky here, but this is a "retro games" website!) If some people can stand the bugs, that's all well and good, but while there are tons of old, buggy games, there are so many old games that are perfectly fine that I will never be able to get through all of them. I guess if one spends an inordinate amount of time playing video games, they might run out of older ones. Even then, I find myself not wanting more modern-style games, but wanting newer classic-style games, a desire which is thankfully being partially met by the homebrew scene.

[ElkinFencer10]

The ability to patch and update games is a great thing as it can allow for fixes that QA could reasonably miss. That said, don't be Ubisoft. Your game should be completely playable with no major game-breaking bugs at launch; updates and patches should be to add content and fix minor things. Of course, even the best studios are going to make mistakes that let major bugs slip in - we saw that with Skyward Sword on Wii, for example - but it should be rare. Some studios still release exceptional games that only need those minor fixes. Some studios release shit that's downright broken and require day one patches to make it functional.

[opa]

Popo, I don't disagree with your statement. It is a lot of work. The point I'm making is it's a compromise of time, money, and manpower versus needing to get a return back. At some point they have to release the product but the consumer suffers if it's a bug ridden mess.

It is unrealistic to expect perfection but companies should shoot for it.

Granted, I believe most games come out in a playable state. (Well... some more than others)

[Gunstar Green]

There are still plenty of modern AAA and indie games that come out and work fine with bug-fixes being for relatively minor things that would have just never gotten fixed in the old days, but "game comes out and works fine" doesn't grab media attention in the way something like Cyberpunk 2077 does.

Developers being able to fix bugs after release is unequivocally a good thing. That said it is a shame when publishers take the "release it now and fix it later" attitude for games that clearly aren't ready for release. It's a difficult balancing act because as games become more complex publishers need to budget for longer and longer development times and that's a hard pill for nervous and impatient investors to swallow.

I think in recent times we're sort of reaching peak complexity for what video games can realistically be without exceptions like unreasonably long development cycles that very few companies are willing to do. I suppose this conundrum is also what's given rise to the popularity of games as a service and early access titles to keep revenue coming in while development continues.

For me personally I just don't tend to buy games at launch unless I have good reason to be confident in the product. Most games end up being fine after enough time and if they don't then I just don't play those games.

[Ack]

For me personally I just don't tend to buy games at launch unless I have good reason to be confident in the product. Most games end up being fine after enough time and if they don't then I just don't play those games.

I pretty much agree with and follow this model much of the time, with certain exceptions such as accounting for developer behavior. For example, I bought Deep Rock Galactic early because I was interested in the product, but also because the developers were in constant communication with their community, interested in their suggestions for improvements without simply listening to the most die-hard core, and because I felt I could get my money's worth in entertainment for the amount I was going to pay.

And now, a couple of years and some 300 hours later, I still enjoy DRG and have no regrets about the purchase.

[Raging Justice]

So just to add another thought to this conversation, I think I am going to start focusing on physical releases for games that have already been available prior to that release. So all of the necessary patches, updates, etc. for that game have already been released and should therefore be on disc. With that in mind, I might buy the PS4 version of Hades, which comes out today. This game has been available for a while already on PC and Switch. I would assume I should be able to play this without having to download some day 1 patch.

[Segata]

You know those midway Dreamcast games with the HOT NEW green label on it? That's because of a major audio glitch so they had to re-release them. When done right updates are good. Tho yes sometimes devs fuck with games. Updates themselves are not bad. Back in the Dreamcast ne nice not have to buy the game again to fix a major issue.